New resource for Coptic studies

The website Coptica gives access to over 100 digitized texts of European studies on Coptic language and literature dating from the 19th century onward. Some of the texts are hosted by different collections such as the Internet Archive.
There are over 30 texts on ancient and Oriental Christianity, including Manichaeism
The website has been created by Pierre Cherix of the University of Geneva

Places left on Library resources session

There are places left on the last Information Skills session for the Study of Religions, which is taking place this Thursday (17th November) between 3 and 4 p.m. in Room E17 (Library)

If you would like to attend, please email ms28@soas.ac.uk and also let me know if there are any topics you particularly want to discuss

If you cannot  make the 17th November and have any queries relating to Library resources, please do not hesitate to contact me

Hajj and Eid al-Adha 2011

An excellent photo essay from Atlantic Magazine online looks at this year's Hajj pilgrimage and celebrations of Eid al-Adha across the globe

Islamic art in New York

The new galleries of Islamic art at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art have just re-opened following a renovation which began in 2003.
This article in the New York Times reviews the new galleries

"The art itself, some 1,200 works spanning more than 1,000 years, is beyond fabulous. An immense cultural vista — necessary, liberating, intoxicatingly pleasurable — has been restored to the city."

Piecing together the Cairo Genizah: new technology aims to reunite fragments

The American Friends of Tel Aviv University report on a project currently underway at Tel Aviv University to piece together digitally the fragments from the Cairo Genizah that are currently scattered among 70 institutions worldwide, including Cambridge, Jerusalem and New York
Visit their website to find out more about this project, that involves using technology based on facial recognition software to identity digitized fragments belonging to the same text 

Jesuits in China : book review

Read the review of Mary Laven's Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit encounter with China (published this year by Faber) in the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History


The reviewer is our own Dr Lars Laaman
Dr Laven is a lecturer in history at the University of Cambridge and is a fellow of Jesus College
The click HERE to read her response.

If you want to read the book yourself, SOAS has a copy at CC266.2 / 734467.
Click HERE to check the catalogue

Welcome to SOAS

Follow the Study of Religions blog for updates on SOAS Library resources, book reviews, websites, news-stories and much more

You can go to the Information skills pages on the BLE for general research guides, guides to the various databases and subject specific research guides

You can also use the Subject Guide for Religions on the main Library website for internet resources selected by Library staff : http://www.soas.ac.uk/library/subjects/religions/

If you have any queries about the religions collections in SOAS Library, finding books and journals, or using any of the online resources, you can contact me:

Mary Seeley (Subject Librarian for History and Religions; Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica)
Room C3 (Library)
Email: ms28@soas.ac.uk
Tel.: 020-7898-4195

Gersonides: Judaism within the limits of reason: book review

Levi ben Gershom was a 14th century Jewish philosopher, born in Orange in Provence (southern France)

Seymour Feldman analyses his life and work in Gersonides: Judaism within the limits of reason, published in 2010 by the Littman Library for Jewish Civilization

Read the H-Net Review by Norbert Samuelson (Arizona State University) on Humanities and Socials Sciences Online.
Read the book in SOAS Library at QN181.06 / 736666 .
Click here to check the catalogue directly

Digitized cataologue of Coptic manuscripts in Berlin

Visit the Alin Suciu blog on "Research on patristics, apocrypha, Coptic literature and manuscripts" to link to digitized copies of Walter Beltz's two volume catalogue of the Coptic manuscripts in the papyrus collections in the State Museum of Berlin - the Archiv fur Papyrusforschung (1978 & 1980)

The making of Indian secularism: book review

Professor Chandra Mallampalli of  the History Department at Westmont College (California) reviews Nandini Chatterji's "The making of Indian secularism: Empire, law and Christianity" in the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History

Dr. Nandini Chatterji teaches in the History Department at Plymouth University (Devon, U.K.).
Click here to read the her response to Professor Mallampalli's review

And read the book in SOAS Library at JA322.1 /737922

Hugoye (Journal of Syriac Studies) has moved!

Hugoye, the digital journal of Syriac Studies has moved to a new site hosted by the Syriac Institute at http://www.bethmardutho.org/

Click on the "Hugoye" tab at the top of the page to access the journal. Click Current Issue for the very latest articles and Index for all other content from 1998 onwards.
The Beth Mardutho site will also be developed to include more digital resources for the study of Syriac and ancient Christianity

Recent dissertations on Rabbinic literature

This posting (from last month) on the Talmud Blog gives a list of recent (2010 and 2011) dissertations on aspects of Rabbinic literature
Click here for the Talmud Blog's homepage. The blog is edited by Dr Shai Secunda and Yitz Landes and aims to"provide readers with content relating to Talmudic news, reviews, culture, currents, and criticism"

Ancient Jewish Zodiac calendar at Qumran?

Research by Dr Helen Jacobus at the University of Manchester has suggested that Qumran scroll 4Q318 was a precursor to the Jewish calendar.


"According to Dr Jacobus, the Aramaic month names used in the scroll are the same as those used in the Hebrew calendar today. They are, she says, Aramaic translations of the Babylonian month names." and "can still be used to find the moon's position in the zodiac on a given date in the Jewish calendar – "


The full article "A Jewish zodiac calendar at Qumran" is available through Manchester University's e-scholar. Click here to view

New open access journal

Relegere: studies in religion and reception is a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal from the University of Otago (New Zealand)
The journal publishes studies of the transmission, reception and effect of religious ideas, narratives and images within any medium, including oral tradition, film, television, literature and drama.
Vol.1, no.1 (2011) is now available (click "current" on the webpage)
Contents of the first issue include

• Rethinking premodern Japanese Buddhist texts: a case study of Prince Shotoku's "Sangyo-gisho" (Mark Dennis)
• Life of Brian or Life of Jesus? Uses of critical Biblical scholarship and non-orthodox views of Jesus in "Monty Python's Life of Brian" (James Crossley)

Religion and politics

Two stories highlighting the tensions where religious sensibilities and politics clash

(1) Via GoogleNews - report from Associated Press on Israel's opening up of the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus on the River Jordan to visitors on a daily basis - a scheme which is opposed by both the Jordanians and the Palestinians

(2) Report from Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper (online) on demands by Turkey's Syriac Christian community to be able to use traditional Syriac surnames (a law of 1934 had banned the use of "foreign" surnames in Turkey)

Stock moves : Jewish studies

All large and standard sized books on Jewish studies have been moved to their new location on Level B of the Library
These comprise:

• QI - Biblical studies
• QJ - Palestine / Israel (in Western languages)
• QN - Hebrew (ancient, medieval and modern)
• QO - Jews and Judaism
• QPA & QPB - Yiddish and Ladino (selected titles only)

Reference books for these subjects are still on Level C for the time being, but will be relocated to Level B shortly.

Digital Dictionary of Buddhism : new online resource

SOAS Library now has access to this resource, which comprises both the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (DDB) and the CJKV-English dictionary (CJKV-E) for Sinitic characters and compounds related to East Asian cultural, political and intellectual history.

DDB is a compilation of Buddhist terms, texts, temples, schools and persons etc found in Buddhist canonical resources which began in print form in 1986 and migrated online in 1995. The initial focus was on East Asia, but it grew to include other Buddhist disciplines and texts. The website includes external links to other lexical, textual and bibliographic resources on Buddhism.

The Library’s subscription allows unlimited searches of both resources (DDB and CJKV-English) on-campus. SOAS staff and students are also able to make unlimited searches off-campus using the link below.

http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/ [On-campus]

http://bit.ly/DigitalDB [Off-campus]

Jewish communities in West Africa: book review

Forgotten diaspora: Jewish communities in West Africa and the making of the Atlantic World, by Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta

This book is currently on order for SOAS Library. Its focus is on two communities of Sephardic Jews who settled in Portudal and Joal in Senegambia in the early 17th century

Read a review by Dr. Tobias Green (Centre for West African Studies, University of Birmingham) from the H-Luso-Africa pages of the Humanities and Social Sciences Net online

Jews and Christians in 5th and 6th century Arabia: book review

Professor Hagith Sivan of the Department of History, University of Kansas, writes about the collected 2008 conference proceedings published in Paris in 2010 as Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles: regards croisés sur les sources (edited by Joëlle Beaucamp, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet and Christian Julien Robin)


Read her opinions in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Find this book in SOAS Library at QO296.396 / 750253

A qualification in secularism?

Colleges and universities have long offered degree courses in religious studies and theology, but now one college in the USA has moved to offer the first degree programme in secularism.
Pitzer College is "a small liberal arts institution" in Southern California  and the course will comprise modules such as "God, Darwin and Design in America", "Anxiety in the Age of Reason" and "Bible as literature"
Read more in this online article from the New York Times

Prophets of the past: book review

Michael Brenner's "Prophets of the past: interpreters of Jewish history" (published in translation by Princeton University Press in 2010) is reviewed on Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online by Professor Moshe Rosman of the Department of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University.

Michael Brenner is Professor of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich. His book looks at Jewish historiography from the 18th century to the present

Find the book in SOAS Library at QO909 / 743994

New open-access book on Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity

Heresy and identity in late Antiquity (ed. by Holger Zellentin & Eduard Iricinschi; Mohr Siebeck, 2008)

Available in full-text from GoogleBooks, this monograph explores "the ways in which late antique groups defined their own socio-political borders and created secure in-group identities by means of discourses on "heresy" and "heretics"'

This book will be of interest to people studying Orthodox Christianity, early Christianity and Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity

The link will shortly be posted to the Library subject guide for Religions, under Electronic Publications

The Jews of Central Asia: history and cuisine

Online article from the Jerusalem Post in which chef Dennis Wasko explores the history of the Bukharian Jews of today's Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, including their cuisine.
A recipe for Bukharian Plov (a chicken and rice dish) is included!

Oriental Orthodox church history : open-access texts via ...

Goussen Library (Universität Bonn)

The Goussen Library on Oriental church history was collected by Heinrich Goussen (d.1927) and has been the subject of a digitisation project by the Universität Bonn since 2007.

This open access collection comprises over 1,000 digitised documents and books dating from the 16^th – 20^th centuries in Western languages, and also in Syrian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Georgian, among others.

Links to this resource will shortly be added to the Library subject guide for Religions, under Electronic Publications, and Individual Religions: Christianity

The Hebrew God: lectures from the Collège de France

Go to the Collège de France's website to download copies of course material from Thomas Römer's ongoing lecture series "Le dieu Yhwh: ses origines, ses cultes, sa transformation en dieu unique".


This comprises bibliographies and PowerPoint presentations (in French)

Jainism in 2nd century India

Article from the online edition of the Indian newspaper The Hindu reports on the discovery of a fragment bearing Tamil-Brahmin script at Pattanam in the Ernakulam district of Kerala that establishes the presence of Jainism on the west coast of India in the 2nd century AD.

"Hymns of Zoroaster": online article

This feature from the news website Today's Zaman looks at the historical background to Professor M.L. West's recently published "The hymns of Zoroaster: a new translation of the most ancient sacred texts of Iran".
For more details and book reviews, go to publisher I.B. Tauris' website.

SOAS Library has a copy at PLB295 / 733763

Syrian Christianity: 2 news reports

Syrian Christian texts preservation project
Report from the MSN website outlining a new project to "trace, catalogue and digitise lost documents relating to religious practices, culture and heritage of Syrian Christians of Kerala"

Threat to Syro-Orthodox monastery
Report from Zenit website on the accusations of proselytism against the monks of the Mor-Gabriel monastery in Turkey (founded in the 4th century AD) and other claims by the local community that are threatening the monastery's survival.
(Zenit is a non-profit Roman Catholic news organisation that aims "to view the modern world through the messages of the Pope and the Holy See")

Christian wedding, Jewish rites (New York Times article)

This feature from the New York Times looks at the growing popularity among evangelical Christians in the USA of incorporating Jewish marriage rituals into wedding ceremonies as a way of connecting to Christianity's Jewish origins. The feature also gives a short overview of the origins and traditions of the Jewish rites

"Jewish worship, pagan symbols"

This illustrated article from Biblical Archaeology Review examines the occurrence and context of zodiac and other "pagan" symbols that appear alongside Biblical scenes in mosaics discovered from the 1920s onwards in the 6th century Jewish settlements of the Jazreel Valley near Galilee, dating from the time when Talmudic Judaism was emerging .
The article includes a great many pictures of the mosaics, many of which are very well preserved

Mapping Buddhist monasteries: a work in progress

Mapping Buddhist monasteries : 200 -1200 CE 


** This wiki-site is a "work in progress" and so content is liable to change at short notice for the time being **

The aim of the project is to catalogue and map details of Buddhist monasteries and convents built across South Asia, South East Asia, Central Asia and East Asia between 200 and 1200 CE. Currently, over 500 are entered on the wiki. The content can be searched by region or tag.
As well as viewing location data for each monastery or convent, the wiki also has country / region chronologies and a detailed bibliography section with links to full-text where content is available via open-access. In depth information and pictures of individual monasteries are also available through links to other websites (although these seem to be particularly aimed at tourists and travellers)

Early Bibles (Hebrew & Christian): digitized texts

The Aleppo Codex Online gives access to a digitized copy of the oldest existent manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, dating from about 930. The online copy contains all the surviving pages of the Codex and is both browsable and searchable.
There are also linked articles about the history and significance of the Codex from the 10th century to the present day.
The website is hosted by the Ben Zvi Institute for the study of Jewish Communities in the East (Jerusalem)

The Codex Sinaiticus gives access to a digitized manuscript of the Christian Bible, dating from the 4th century. It is handwritten in Greek. The New Testament in the original vernacular (koine) and the Old Testament is in the early Septuagint version. Both documents are heavily annotated by early commentators.
Click on the "see the manuscript" tab to view the pages and transcription of the Greek text, and to browse and search the document. Background material on the history of the manuscript is also included.
This project was the result of international collaboration to reunite the previously scattered pages of the manuscript

Both links will shortly be added to SOAS Library online resources.

New open access journal

Hallesche Beitrage zur Orientwissenschaft

This academic journal published by the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (frequently in monograph format) covers a wide range of topics and countries (ancient history, archives, religions, Middle Eastern studies etc.) There is a great deal of content that might be of interest to students of the study of religions


It is currently available as a digitized open-access texts from Vol.1 (1979) to Vol.44 (2007).
The current link address is via the AWOL (Ancient World Online blog)

Christianity in the Middle East: manuscripts blog

HMML Chronicle is  new blog has just been launched by Dr Adam McCollum, Lead Cataloger of Eastern Christian Manuscripts at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (St. John's University, Minnesota). The blog will discuss manuscripts and the languages, literature, and history of Christianity in the Middle East.
See also the Hill Museum's main website for more information on the collections (including material in Arabic, Armenian, Syriac and Ge'ez), and links to articles, images and exhibition reports.